rossnroller's blog

Hi folks. Very long time no post. I felt I just had to emerge from obscurity to let you know about my recent visit to Zita's Bang Bang Bakery in Siem Reap, Cambodia. (Zita's handle on TFL is BakingBadly, which I can tell you must be read as supremely ironic!).

Fortunately, our hotel (the Mekong Angkor Boutique Hotel - great value BTW) was just 10 minutes' walk away from Bang Bang Bakery according to Googlemaps . It seemed longer and we were relieved to locate the bakery, which looks gleaming new.

Hi TFL folks.

Long time, no post, but I couldn't let an Easter pass without my customary hot cross bun report. First, some eye candy (healthier to indulge via the eyes than scoff these fat-and-calorie bombs, especially if, like me, you allow yourself the indulgence of  slathering on the butter - it's fortunate Easter comes but once per year).

Made a pain de campagne first thing, and had some slices for lunch with some of the best smoked salmon I've tasted.

Every Easter, I try out multiple dry yeast recipes and set them up against my SD buns, which I make to a recipe I've developed over the years and now consider finely tuned. I can't better my current SD HCB recipe, and have not found a yeasted version to rival it, although last year's came quite close (see 2012 post here, which includes a link to my SD bun recipe - now simplified and tweaked a little more, but essentially the same).

Hi folks. Long time between blog posts for me. Been baking as much as ever but got lazy with taking pics and doing write-ups. I've fallen into a comfortable 3-bake-per-week rhythm cycling through our favourites, which these days are mostly variations on my pain de campagne. I like this rhythm after 3 years of working through scores of different breads. I've found it's a different type of learning, focusing on just a few breads - an incremental progression towards quality and consistency. Nice after all the experimenting, but perhaps not so conducive to regular posting, for me at least.

Having recently tried Syd's version of a San Fran SD, I thought it was a good time to revisit DM Snyder's very different version. When I baked it a couple of months ago, my sense of taste had been annihilated by a shocker of a head cold, so was curious to try it again now that I'm back to salivating, savouring, gluttonous normality.

Not drawing as long a titular bow as you might think! These two master craftsmen have much in common.

Every Easter I make sourdough hot cross buns, then try one or two new recipes using dry yeast. My sourdough recipe I've tweaked over years now, so no surprise that the SD buns usually get the nod over the yeasted ones. Last year's were terrif, and I was not expecting to better them this year. I didn't. Pretty good, but not quite up to 2011's batch. I compromised on a couple of ingredients and left out another, rather than sticking to the tried and true that had worked so well in previous years. Baker's slackness then.